<p>Basically what the title of the post says. </p>
<p>A friend of mine told me he thinks that the entire cycle's been shifted two LSAT points. I told him I might've agreed with him for things up until maybe the top of the T14, but that the influx of applicants couldn't have affected the top of the T6 THAT; my logic was that even though applicants have dramatically increased such a small percentage of those new applicants are people who are competitive for the top spots anyways. </p>
<p>Feel free to comment, just trying to get an accurate gauge of how different this year's cycle has been.</p>
<p>The percentage of applicants who are competitive is probably about the same as before, though now there are more applicants. So in absolute terms, the number of people competitive for the T14 is larger, even though class sizes have increased little if at all.</p>
<p>it is more competitive across the board, even at the elite schools. keep in mind that less opportunities in banking/consulting/other elite jobs could lead to more high-potential law applicants from the best undergraduate institutions. believe it or not, graduating in a recession can dramatically affect your lifetime earnings, as excellent entry level-job opportunities are diminished. thus the opportunity cost of graduate school is also lowered.</p>
<p>there is no reason to think that the increase in applicants is only targeted at mediocre or sub-par schools.</p>
<p>You know, it should actually be possible to take a look at this over LSN, as the cycle is almost over. I’d be curious to see what anybody else came up with.</p>
<p>as a bit more than a casual observer of LSN and concentrating on particular T 7-14 schools-- admission does seem to be a bit more competitive this year and GPA definitely seems to play a bigger role than before.</p>
<p>as an example Cornell still seems to have alot of waitlisted kids who have stats in the 167/168 range with 3.5 gpa’s. Those stats would have been a pretty sure thing for Cornell a year or two ago. Some of these applicants may still get off the waitlist- but it is gonna be a long admission cycle for them. Applicants with that LSAT range seem to fare much better for a T-14 admittance with a 3.8 gpa.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to do a “post season” analysis- but my gut tells me that a 2 point shift in LSAT (and at least a 3.6+ gpa- especially for the 168/170 LSAT group) may be close to the mark.</p>
<p>A year or two ago a 3.9 gpa/ 166 LSAT could still get you into a T-14 school. I don’t think that would happen today- unless one was real lucky or had something special in their background.</p>
<p>I am also gonna throw out the idea that schools are also overly concerned with their ranking and want to see if you are truly interested in attending if accepted. So it’s becoming a bit more than just lsat and gpa.</p>
<p>my kid received a waitlist from a T15-18 school early in the cycle. But the letter was worded to say- that if this school is truly your top choice, please contact us ASAP. My hunch is that they would have accepted her if she demonstrated more interest.<br>
As she had already received more appealing offers, she didn’t respond affirmatively.</p>
<p>so in addition to the stats going up-- you may also have to prove to the school that they are your top choice.</p>
<p>It just seems like it will be a long cycle for alot of kids this year. Too many applicants- applying to too many schools and the law schools really may not know who is going to attend until they get the first deposit. </p>
<p>At that point we’ll be able to gather the info using LSN and other sites which track raw data stats. (forgot the name of that website)</p>
<p>^ Pretty standard case. I know kids from NY with 3.8’s and 171+'s getting WLed from UVA because UVA expects them not to come. </p>
<p>BDM: I’ve been scowering LSN for awhile now, and I’m not 100% certain yet what to think. I’ll let you know what comes about after the cycles completely over; I’m waiting to see how the WL kids do right now.</p>
<p>This being the first cycle of the new admissions dean at H, I wonder what kind of impact that’s had on the school’s overall admission’s style. I’ve heard a lot of worry about this on the H thread over at TLS. I wonder how much reality there is in the concern.</p>
<p>I agree with BostonEng. A lot of super smart undergrads are seeing the bad side of investment banking, and they are switching to law. It doesn’t take much to switch from pre-finance to pre-law at an Ivy, Stanford, etc. All they do is take the LSAT. The Morgan Stanley internships they had done to prepare for careers in finance can only help them when being put on the resume. This influx of talented students alone would heat up competition for T6 and even for HYS.</p>
<p>Less agreement via speculation and anecdotal evidence and more statistical info please.</p>
<p>And just to throw an anecdote to disrupt marny’s 3.9/166 generalization, I have several clients with just those numbers, and they’re all deciding between T10 schools right now. That’s not to say that a 3.9/166 is a guarantee for a T10/T14, but it’s definitely not a lost hope.</p>
<p>First and foremost sorry for the typo (THAT MUCH*) in original post. </p>
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<p>I was thinking more along these lines of logic:
The top 1% of studetns taking the LSAT score above a 173. Let’s assume that only students scoring above this threshold are competitive applicants for HYS + CCN. </p>
<p>If 100 new students decide to apply to law school, proportionally to how students have scored in the past, only one of those 100 students will be competitive for a spot at HYSCCN. Comparatively, 99 other students will be placed into the total pool of law school applicants. A school in the middle of the law school chain might have 50 new applicants who meet their minimum requirements to be considered. As a result there is one kid who previously might’ve gotten into HYSCCN who will now not, but there are 50 who might’ve gotten in GW or a UCLA.</p>
<p>That was my rationale for thinking there’s no way the change could be evenly distributed across the board (ie. saying something like it went up 2 LSAT points for every college).</p>
<p>One obvious problem is that your scale is way off. For every 100 additional applicants, there may be around three with a shot at HYSCCN, but probably only six or so with a shot at GW or UCLA.</p>
<p>Flowerhead- I didn’t say it was a lost hope (166/3.9)- but my gut tells me those kids were very lucky or had something special in their background (elite undergrad, underrepresented geographic area or minority, armed forces experience etc.) </p>
<p>as we said- we’re all just anxiously awaiting until the final results are in (after waitlists) and we can all just speculate some more!!</p>
<p>There are just too many variables this year. If 3.8 / 171’s are getting waitlisted from UVA, you sometimes need to add anecdotal info to give a fuller picture as to what is actually going on. Sometimes you need more than the facts to put things in proper context.</p>